Nope. From the study guide [1], rebase does not even appear to be mentioned, but "Define components of GitHub Actions workflows, including events that trigger workflows, workflow files, workflow runs, and jobs" and "Describe pricing for GitHub products, including GitHub Actions" are.
I think so! I don’t mind it though - it lets Microsoft try and make some extra money that supports the development of GitHub and it lets developers get some cheap signalling for their CV.
Ugh, this has Microsoft's playbook written all over it. Introduce a certification, thus increasing the gap between developers who (had their employee) pay Microsoft and developers that didn't. Conflate a generic concept (Git in this case) with Microsoft's specific implementation (Github), muddying the difference in managers' lexicons. Attempt to set Github as a standard to reach in everyone's mind.
I mean there's a certificaiton, so it has to be something we shouldn't miss out on, right?
I think you're seeing non-existing intent. This seems like a straightforward way to monetize their acquisition without affecting the users (with paywalls or what not). Certifications are a gold mine for enterprise.
Also, I have yet to meet people taking certifications seriously on an individual level. The sole way I've seen them used is box-checking when choosing a contractor/vendor. Anyone got a different experience?
Personally I've found certifications are a good way to show you're good at passing certifications, and nothing else.
I have nothing against people who show up with their resumes filled with them, but it's not a valuable indicator in my opinion. I'd rather see what they've built. Show me some useful things on your github or blog. That I can see value in.
Obviously we're talking about software-related certs, not pilots licenses, etc...
This gets repeated every time, but it's worth repeating: You've just discounted many skilled people working at companies which don't allow public personal projects, and people who are not interested in working on personal projects. There's a significant number of them.
I should rephrase -- having stuff in your Github is the best way to show you know your way around Github.
Not discounting the fact that you may have lots of other skills and nothing in your Github.
In general if someone has enough other skills and worked at companies that have a high bar, it's likely they can pick up Github fast enough even if they haven't used it that it shouldn't be a hiring concern.
Like for example, if someone is fluent in C++ or some such, I wouldn't doubt their ability to learn how to use git.
> Personally I've found certifications are a good way to show you're good at passing certifications, and nothing else.
Some are good. I did AWS Solution Architect Pro, and this one was tough, one needs years of hands on to pass. Anyone with this one will get an instant plus in my book. I did not bother renewing it though, after 3yrs expired :)
I spent some time last year getting some "beginner" AWS certifications and those are definitely worth it; I spent a few dozen hours following online courses (A Cloud Guru is pretty good, and if you have the time you only need to subscribe for a month or so) and feel like I went from superficial knowledge (like sorta knowing what AWS, EC2, RDS etc are) to having err, certified superficial knowledge. TL;DR I know more about AWS now without actually having worked in it.
That said, I wouldn't go for any of the other certifications without actually working / having worked professionally in AWS. Or anything you can get certified for, for that matter.
I mean iirc I've got some cisco certifications as well but I and everyone else cheated on the exam and don't remember anything of it.
Being difficult != good. It can take years to prep and pass a CCIE as well but it’s not really a good indicator of being a good network engineer, despite the esoteric protocol details you have to memorize.
This seems like a very narrow view. I don't know where you live but in Asian countries, people care about certificates too much. It's also often used as a way to filter poor people without directly discriminating because certification costs time and money.
We'd have to review the contenu to be sure, but my initial reaction was the same as @breakingcups. That would fit with a push against gitlab's devops strategy, amongst other things ?
Thank god most of the non-corporate software industry regards certifications as a way to pad a non-impressive resume and not something actually valuable.
Mostly a class thing but also a reflection of the fact that the exams are crammable without understanding. MCQs work that way unless you make the question back very large. A computer adaptive test could bypass this but it doesn’t feel like it assesses your knowledge the way even a test composed of short answer questions does. It’s not like anyone in the US who’s passed the bar exam holds it in particularly high esteem and for practical purposes doing that presupposes you have a JD.
I think part of the reason is that when you choose to get a degree, you don't know any better, and it probably seems as good a way to get into the field as any (in lots of other fields, it's the only way in - e.g. bio-tech, so it's an easy assumption to make). By the time you get far enough in your career to get a certification, you're also far enough along to know that it's worthless, so it's more of a red flag to others if you choose to do so anyway.
There's a growing sentiment that degrees are the same; it's certainly not the prevailing view.
One part, in my view, is the exceptionally temporary nature of a certificate. A degree typically teaches things that are fairly static.
If you're a biologist, I would expect 90% of the things you learned in college to still be true, or mostly true, when you retire. A certificate, on the other hand, validates that you know this particular thing well, until the next version comes out. Depending on what "thing" is, and when the last version was released, it could be less than a year. So even if I accept that the certificate does mean you know this system really really well, it doesn't mean that's true for very long.
They're also an external validation of your skills, so people who aren't confident in their skills will often mention their certificate when they feel their skills are being challenged. I think this creates a bias in how we view certificate holders. I've noticed the same thing with people who have degrees from prestigious institutions. I've got a bad taste in my mouth from MIT because most of the people who went to MIT and I'm aware that they went to MIT like to bring it up when they don't feel confident. That's not to say everyone who went to MIT is like that; the rest just don't feel the need to constantly mention it, so I don't even know.
They're typically multiple choice as well, which are much easier to fake understanding on. "Which network architecture accommodates X best?" is probably going to be easier to answer than "You have a network with X servers that need Y bandwidth, etc, etc, explain what network architecture you would choose, and why."
And lastly, I think there's a certain sense of derision for certificates for things created in our lifetime. Things that came before us have a sense of tradition that gives them a sense of legitimacy. Of course your accountant needs a degree, they've always had degrees. New things don't have that, so you have to justify why a certification is necessary, and most don't meet the bar. Everyone managed to use GitHub just fine without a certification.
previous experience/internships at good companies that I know have solid engineering and/or CS/Engineering degree from a school I trust.
In my mind, bootcamps, certs and micro-degrees often signal someone was unable to enter the field due to a lack of qualifications. Most of them are pretty much rote memorization of commercial products, so fairly low value, or 'one trick ponies' where they know how to create a web app with one and only one tech stack (by copy-pasting templates!).
Really, I expect anyone with a good degree or previous experience to just be able to read git and GitHub's manuals and get it.
> Introduce a certification, thus increasing the gap between developers who (had their employee) pay Microsoft and developers that didn't.
Did anyone ever take Microsoft's "Microsoft Certified Application Developer" or "Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect" titles seriously?
I was still in high-school when I heard about it. I asked some SWE friends of mine who told me that they didn't take it seriously due to the wide prevalence of _brain dumps_ all over the Internet. A few said having it on your resume may actually hurt their careers or job-seeking because potential employers who were on-the-ball took a dim view of them because they were so easy to obtain, so and automatically assumed anyone who advertised the fact they had one when they already had a degree in CS and/or good industrial experience at the very least had misplaced priorities (so I guess if you have it as a single line-item on your resume in 9pt text buried at the bottom that's okay, just don't make it a heading).
What's amusing to me is that after working at Microsoft in Redmond for a few years at the start of my career as an FTE SE in DevDiv - I didn't know anyone who had such a certificate. If no-one needed one to work at Microsoft on the very tools these certificates are for, what's the point?
At one point they seemed to be bona fide certifications of actual high skill levels (or at least in-depth knowledge of related products). But then their value degraded, and quite rapidly.
Can't point you to dates and blog posts on this though, this all comes from my vague memories.
Indeed. Although now I just fire up an instance in AWS for a bit if we need to play with something. But I rarely if ever touch windows now past using it as a shell for some electron apps and terminals :)
Did anyone ever take Microsoft's "Microsoft Certified Application Developer" or "Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect" titles seriously?
Most developers generally didn't, but certainly back in the early 2000s I heard lots of managers and other people responsible for hiring being impressed by it. To be blunt, if you where a mediocre developer with a mediocre resume, it was for a while a pretty efficient way to stand out among other mediocre developers.
Microsoft also used to offer some nice goodies and discounts to Microsoft Certified Professionals that could make it worth having, financially, if you where a freelance developer or worked for a smaller company.
The people that have it are Microsoft consultants, incl. Microsofts internal consulting crews. They like these certs, and take as many as possible and nowadays LinkedIn shows tons of Microsoft employees (outside internal engineering) who brag about the xth number of some random cert.
For some OEMs - access to purchasing, support, manuals, firmware images, configuration tools, etc. is gated behind "Certified Partner" programs. For an organization to be a Certified Partner at a certain tier, it must have some number of FTEs holding a specific cert.
A good certified partner won't hire you just because you have the cert, but it saves them the trouble of having to get it for you.
This kind of thing is uncommon in Github world, but very common in Microsoft/Azure world.
> This kind of thing is uncommon in Github world, but very common in Microsoft/Azure world.
What exclusive materials or advantages do Microsoft "Partner" companies have thesedays? MS is very good at making available their documentation, and almost all of their modern stuff (.NET Core, etc) is developed openly on GitHub.
But other companies that aren't as engineering-driven like SAP, Oracle, yeah - I can see them doing that.
The only advantage I can think of is one of cross-promotion or referrals from Microsoft's own consulting division. (I'll admit I have no idea who MS's Consulting customers are - I thought everyone went with Accenture, IBM, Capita or Atos).
From cool place to institution. From fun to bureaucratic depression.
Reason I personally like GitHub as it is meeting point for like minded people, place where you play and learn while playing, without any judgment.
Certification obstruct that process of learn-play, it is like grownups coming to playground and saying to kids, now you have to play this way, you cannot play your own way... because erm... it help us to quantify you so we can exploit you better.
I heard somewhere "century of left brain domination over right brain"...
> Conflate a generic concept (Git in this case) with Microsoft's specific implementation (Github), muddying the difference in managers' lexicons. Attempt to set Github as a standard to reach in everyone's mind.
Both of those already happened years before Microsoft acquired GitHub.
> Conflate a generic concept (Git in this case) with Microsoft's specific implementation (Github)
Github has been intentionally conflating git with github for their own gain since way before Microsoft ever conceived of the notion of buying them.
A year or so before the acquisition, one of my Microsoft coworkers asked if I'd gotten approval to post our internal code on github. What I had actually done was put some of our testing code which was, for all intents and purposes, not under version control, into a git repo hosted by an internal platform.
We have AWS and Google cloud certifications though. I don't find those any less "enterprisy" than Microsoft to be honest. And they definitely remind me of the Java certificates of the 90s.
We will soon be able to hire github certified engineers. Thanks Microsoft, talent driven towards the skills our industry needs will make us all more productive:
https://youtu.be/rR4n-0KYeKQ
LOL. Judging by all the comments here, maybe they shouldn't have branded it as "certification". I think "flare" or "badge" would have been better marketing.
Or something like... oh I am a level 99 Git wizard... This will definitely help me get dates.
Slightly off topic, but the url seems to be conflict with a user called "certifications". You can find that user using GitHub api or Mobile app, but you can't view his profile page on desktop.
It highlights that while vanity / "root" paths are cool, they also become a challenge later on.
They could either have gone with e.g. Reddit's scheme of having users under `/u/certifications`, or put extra GH pages under a subdomain (e.g. certification.github.com or pages.github.com/certification)
Came to say this, and also that the app user link hijacks the page link on iOS. I had to click the ellipsis, then share, them open in safari to even access the page...
The main problematic thing about this is that it can be used as a way for Microsoft to push their beliefs and agendas. It further centralizes git even more.
For example (extreme case to make a point), imagine if the questions were like:
1) Which is the most reliable git platform? (a) github (b) gitlab (c) gitweb
2) Which is the best license for new code? (a) MIT (b) GPLv3 (c) ALv2
3) Which is better for coding? (a) spaces (b) tabs (c) both
The point is that Microsoft shouldn't be the central authority for git things. Lets make the internet, the web, and development in general more decentralized.
Q4 seems to be ensuring that people are informed that source visible and open source are not the same thing. If you don't understand copyright, it's easy to think that you can just publish code without a license and have it be usable by everyone for any reason.
I am so hoping ForgeFed to become widely available and adopted, maybe not by Github but by many other code forge implementations out there, knitting decentralized development together using the fabric of the Fediverse.
Emphasis on "can be"; nobody's stopping the competition for coming up with similar schemes, and while they have the biggest market / mindshare when it comes to git / open source hosting, they are definitely not the only one and the alternatives are great.
I can see how it's a bit like indoctrination though, but as another thread mentions, the AWS certification isn't that different; the first certification you can achieve there is pretty much learning the marketing message and talking points from AWS and cloud computing as a whole.
> I can see how it's a bit like indoctrination though, but as another thread mentions, the AWS certification isn't that different; the first certification you can achieve there is pretty much learning the marketing message and talking points from AWS and cloud computing as a whole.
In other words, AWS certifications suck too. I don't see how that excuses MS or GH.
While I agree with everyone this certification is probably useless (idk a single hiring manager in my company that told me oh hey the certifications on this candidate are really stellar) and that Microsoft CAN have some hidden agenda here...
I would disagree in saying that Microsoft is making Github shit. There have been so many good things Github released since Microsoft took over (Github sponsoring, Github actions, bunch of other things) IMO it's been a major benefit. I'm hoping they don't screw it up
I was hoping for some CA that hackers could use for stuff like IoT. Some semi-distributed point where you could handle individual or groups of devices.
One of the example questions is "Which statements are true about GitHub Marketplace?" Imagine failing to get certified by Github because, despite knowing how to use git and github well, you don't know enough about Github Marketplace. Worse than that, imagine not getting a job because you don't know enough about Github Marketplace to get the right certification. Wow.
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Look at the sample questions, they stuff your head with useless marketing crap and idiots will have to be thankful to have been brain washed...
I mean there's a certificaiton, so it has to be something we shouldn't miss out on, right?
Also, I have yet to meet people taking certifications seriously on an individual level. The sole way I've seen them used is box-checking when choosing a contractor/vendor. Anyone got a different experience?
I have nothing against people who show up with their resumes filled with them, but it's not a valuable indicator in my opinion. I'd rather see what they've built. Show me some useful things on your github or blog. That I can see value in.
Obviously we're talking about software-related certs, not pilots licenses, etc...
Not discounting the fact that you may have lots of other skills and nothing in your Github.
In general if someone has enough other skills and worked at companies that have a high bar, it's likely they can pick up Github fast enough even if they haven't used it that it shouldn't be a hiring concern.
Like for example, if someone is fluent in C++ or some such, I wouldn't doubt their ability to learn how to use git.
Some are good. I did AWS Solution Architect Pro, and this one was tough, one needs years of hands on to pass. Anyone with this one will get an instant plus in my book. I did not bother renewing it though, after 3yrs expired :)
That said, I wouldn't go for any of the other certifications without actually working / having worked professionally in AWS. Or anything you can get certified for, for that matter.
I mean iirc I've got some cisco certifications as well but I and everyone else cheated on the exam and don't remember anything of it.
I did not say that. I said some are good, and named one.
In SEA I see "Male Only" on programmer jobs not that infrequently, plus very often age requirements explicitly stated for all sorts of jobs.
I'm curious: minimum or maximum?
One part, in my view, is the exceptionally temporary nature of a certificate. A degree typically teaches things that are fairly static.
If you're a biologist, I would expect 90% of the things you learned in college to still be true, or mostly true, when you retire. A certificate, on the other hand, validates that you know this particular thing well, until the next version comes out. Depending on what "thing" is, and when the last version was released, it could be less than a year. So even if I accept that the certificate does mean you know this system really really well, it doesn't mean that's true for very long.
They're also an external validation of your skills, so people who aren't confident in their skills will often mention their certificate when they feel their skills are being challenged. I think this creates a bias in how we view certificate holders. I've noticed the same thing with people who have degrees from prestigious institutions. I've got a bad taste in my mouth from MIT because most of the people who went to MIT and I'm aware that they went to MIT like to bring it up when they don't feel confident. That's not to say everyone who went to MIT is like that; the rest just don't feel the need to constantly mention it, so I don't even know.
They're typically multiple choice as well, which are much easier to fake understanding on. "Which network architecture accommodates X best?" is probably going to be easier to answer than "You have a network with X servers that need Y bandwidth, etc, etc, explain what network architecture you would choose, and why."
And lastly, I think there's a certain sense of derision for certificates for things created in our lifetime. Things that came before us have a sense of tradition that gives them a sense of legitimacy. Of course your accountant needs a degree, they've always had degrees. New things don't have that, so you have to justify why a certification is necessary, and most don't meet the bar. Everyone managed to use GitHub just fine without a certification.
previous experience/internships at good companies that I know have solid engineering and/or CS/Engineering degree from a school I trust.
In my mind, bootcamps, certs and micro-degrees often signal someone was unable to enter the field due to a lack of qualifications. Most of them are pretty much rote memorization of commercial products, so fairly low value, or 'one trick ponies' where they know how to create a web app with one and only one tech stack (by copy-pasting templates!).
Really, I expect anyone with a good degree or previous experience to just be able to read git and GitHub's manuals and get it.
Did anyone ever take Microsoft's "Microsoft Certified Application Developer" or "Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect" titles seriously?
I was still in high-school when I heard about it. I asked some SWE friends of mine who told me that they didn't take it seriously due to the wide prevalence of _brain dumps_ all over the Internet. A few said having it on your resume may actually hurt their careers or job-seeking because potential employers who were on-the-ball took a dim view of them because they were so easy to obtain, so and automatically assumed anyone who advertised the fact they had one when they already had a degree in CS and/or good industrial experience at the very least had misplaced priorities (so I guess if you have it as a single line-item on your resume in 9pt text buried at the bottom that's okay, just don't make it a heading).
What's amusing to me is that after working at Microsoft in Redmond for a few years at the start of my career as an FTE SE in DevDiv - I didn't know anyone who had such a certificate. If no-one needed one to work at Microsoft on the very tools these certificates are for, what's the point?
Can't point you to dates and blog posts on this though, this all comes from my vague memories.
That's mostly why people bothered with it.
It was completely no use whatsoever. In fact looking back the contents were stupid and dangerous.
Same here, but MCSE used to come with all sorts of goodies like a free TechNet subscription. That ceased long ago however.
Curious to hear more.
Most developers generally didn't, but certainly back in the early 2000s I heard lots of managers and other people responsible for hiring being impressed by it. To be blunt, if you where a mediocre developer with a mediocre resume, it was for a while a pretty efficient way to stand out among other mediocre developers.
Microsoft also used to offer some nice goodies and discounts to Microsoft Certified Professionals that could make it worth having, financially, if you where a freelance developer or worked for a smaller company.
But Amazon is no different.
A good certified partner won't hire you just because you have the cert, but it saves them the trouble of having to get it for you.
This kind of thing is uncommon in Github world, but very common in Microsoft/Azure world.
What exclusive materials or advantages do Microsoft "Partner" companies have thesedays? MS is very good at making available their documentation, and almost all of their modern stuff (.NET Core, etc) is developed openly on GitHub.
But other companies that aren't as engineering-driven like SAP, Oracle, yeah - I can see them doing that.
The only advantage I can think of is one of cross-promotion or referrals from Microsoft's own consulting division. (I'll admit I have no idea who MS's Consulting customers are - I thought everyone went with Accenture, IBM, Capita or Atos).
Reason I personally like GitHub as it is meeting point for like minded people, place where you play and learn while playing, without any judgment.
Certification obstruct that process of learn-play, it is like grownups coming to playground and saying to kids, now you have to play this way, you cannot play your own way... because erm... it help us to quantify you so we can exploit you better.
I heard somewhere "century of left brain domination over right brain"...
- Employees : show your value by these certs and increase your potential wage.
- Employers : now you can easily compare potential employees ( driving down their wage )
Both of those already happened years before Microsoft acquired GitHub.
Github has been intentionally conflating git with github for their own gain since way before Microsoft ever conceived of the notion of buying them.
A year or so before the acquisition, one of my Microsoft coworkers asked if I'd gotten approval to post our internal code on github. What I had actually done was put some of our testing code which was, for all intents and purposes, not under version control, into a git repo hosted by an internal platform.
Sounds like a sound business opportunity [pun intended].
Just call it a “microdegree” for better marketability.
Or something like... oh I am a level 99 Git wizard... This will definitely help me get dates.
They could either have gone with e.g. Reddit's scheme of having users under `/u/certifications`, or put extra GH pages under a subdomain (e.g. certification.github.com or pages.github.com/certification)
A challenge for the affected user, not for the platform itself.
Their profile page is broken as you mentioned.
For example (extreme case to make a point), imagine if the questions were like:
1) Which is the most reliable git platform? (a) github (b) gitlab (c) gitweb
2) Which is the best license for new code? (a) MIT (b) GPLv3 (c) ALv2
3) Which is better for coding? (a) spaces (b) tabs (c) both
The point is that Microsoft shouldn't be the central authority for git things. Lets make the internet, the web, and development in general more decentralized.
Q4: Which licensing statement best describes a project to be truly open source?
* it is recommended to choose a license because without it, the default copyright laws apply
(technically correct but yeah)
Q5: Which statements are true about GitHub Marketplace?
* a digital catalog with hundreds of software listings from independent software vendors
* a place where apps and actions can be found to improve your workflow
(marketing/ad)
I think this is something even the FSF will tell people.
https://forgefed.peers.community/
I can see how it's a bit like indoctrination though, but as another thread mentions, the AWS certification isn't that different; the first certification you can achieve there is pretty much learning the marketing message and talking points from AWS and cloud computing as a whole.
In other words, AWS certifications suck too. I don't see how that excuses MS or GH.
Now extending by adding certification (& some manufactured market value).
I would disagree in saying that Microsoft is making Github shit. There have been so many good things Github released since Microsoft took over (Github sponsoring, Github actions, bunch of other things) IMO it's been a major benefit. I'm hoping they don't screw it up